Sonorant-only phonology
What are sonorants?
Sonorants are one of two primary superclasses of sounds produced in speech.
The other is Obstruents — plosives (p, b, t, d, k, g, etc), fricatives (f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, etc), taps & flaps (), and others.
Sonorants include:
V — Vowels
i, e, a, o, u, ʌ
i, ɪ, y, e, ə, ɜ, ɛ, æ, a, ɑ, ɒ, ʌ, ɔ, o, ʊ, ɵ, u
N — Nasals
m, n, ñ, ŋ
m, n, ɲ, ɳ, ŋ
Y — Semi-vowels — liquids, approximants, glides
w, y, l, r
w, β̞, ʋ, ð̞, l, ɫ, ɹ, j, ʎ, ɰ
As you can see, there are a lot of available phones to choose from! And this is not an exhaustive list. So by no means would it be a challenging language to create.
It would most likely feature a lot of diphthongs, and probably some pronunciation—grammar morphology by which certain sounds are metastasised in order to produce word mutations, due to the smaller range of available consonants.
Syllable structures:
Monophthongs
-
-N
-Y
-YN
V
a
an
ay
ayn
N-
na
nan
nay
nayn
Y-
ya
yan
yay
yayn
NY-
nya
nyan
nyay
nyayn
Diphthongs
-
-N
-Y
-YN
VV
oa
oan
oay
oayn
N-
noa
noan
noay
noayn
Y-
yoa
yoan
yoay
yoayn
NY-
nyoa
nyoan
nyoay
nyoayn
Available phones
Vowels
i ɪ y e ə ɜ ɛ æ a ɑ ɒ ʌ ɔ o ʊ ɵ u
Nasals
m n ɲ ɳ ŋ ɴ
n͡m ɳ͡m ŋ͡m
Liquids
l ɫ ɭ ʎ ʟ ʟ̠
Approximants
w β̞ ʋ ð̞ ɹ ɹ̠ ɻ j ɥ ɰ
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